Video: Hike the 2,200-Mile Appalachian Trail in 4 Minutes

While there is no governing body, the unofficial record for completing the 2,181-mile Appalachian Trail was set by trail runner Andrew Thompson in 2005, at 45 days, 13 hours, 31 minutes. Thing is, Thompson didn’t turn his record-setting trek into a slick stop-motion video the way filmmaker Kevin Gallagher did.

Gallagher’s first-person short film, The Green Tunnel, allows anyone to experience his six-month hike from Georgia to Maine in less than four minutes.

Back in spring 2005, the Virginia-based hiking enthusiast — who goes by the trail name “Fester” — hiked the Appalachian Trail and stopped every day to take 24 snapshots of quintessential sections of this famed route. By the end, he’d collected more than 4,000 slides — yes, slides — which, at first, sat in storage boxes due to tight finances and a still-restless wandering spirit.

“I went off to do other stuff like walk from Mexico to Canada” on the Pacific Crest Trail, Gallagher told Wired.com. “It was only after getting to a less-transient place that was I able to even scan the slides and get all the elements together.”

Once Gallagher had enough money, curiosity started to get the better of him. “It was an experiment,” he recalled. “I was shooting film, so I really had no idea that anything would come of it until I was able to piece it together, long after the hike.”

Gallagher’s site describes the film as bridging “the divide from a contemporary America’s pace and outlook to the natural world’s slow rhythms.” It does just that, as the shots of a serene forest or a frozen stream winding through the snow pass by so frantically that the urge to hit the pause button becomes unbearable — first to get a better look at the view, and then to take a break from the frenzied pace of the footage. The rush around boulders, through meadows and over fallen trees leaves you wanting to see such beauty with your own eyes.

OK, but one question: What’s up with the “Fester” nickname?

“Trail names are a big part of the through-hiking subculture,” Gallagher explained. “Most hikers shed their old names in exchange for some mildly insulting moniker.

“I was covered in festering poison-ivy sores for the first month on the trail, so there it was.”